


Yangchen At The Boundary

by shelebum



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/F, Spirit World, Training, Trans Female Character, WOMEN EVERYWHERE, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-30
Updated: 2013-10-30
Packaged: 2017-12-31 00:12:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1025031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shelebum/pseuds/shelebum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Crossing to the Spirit World for the first time, Yangchen meets a Water Tribe Boundary-Crosser called Apuluut. As Yangchen's waterbending training commences, Yangchen and Apuluut grow close in the Spirit World - until a crisis between the Spirit World and the human world puts their skills to the test.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yangchen At The Boundary

CHAPTER ONE

Yangchen sat at the lowest point of the Western Air Temple, away from the gusts of training, the smells of cooking, the talk and song of the weavers.

_Step within yourself. Step within the Spirit World._

Yangchen shut out the stone beneath her legs, shut out the sweet-scented wind in the valley, shut out the sounds of birds and bison and insects. It had never worked. Yangchen breathed deep and tried to inhabit that deep place: a place of breath, a place within and without the world. Breathe in. Breathe out. Yangchen shut out time, shut out discomfort, shut out thought. Breathe in. It had never worked and Yangchen feared it never would. Breathe out. Shut out fear. Yangchen breathed in and out and held that place of breath within her body, a dark place like a door into the caves where the nuns lived, until, feeling suddenly cold, Yangchen opened her eyes and saw--

#

\--a high world, rock and snow and air. Yangchen stood on a single circle of lichen.

A plain stretched in every direction. No other plant life, no animals, no rock formations, no signs of human habitation. The wind blew like a thousand hands: pulling at Yangchen’s long hair, at her robes, at her legs.

Yangchen walked.

For what felt like an hour, Yangchen walked, seeing nothing -- until a woman walked towards her.

A spirit? In the stories, spirits wore the bodies of great animals or great beings beyond imagination. This looked like a woman, although different to the women Yangchen knew: her skin darker, her clothes made of animal fur, her eyes blue. A Water Tribe woman.

It couldn’t be.

Yangchen pressed her hands together and bowed. The woman walked closer, wordless, the only sound her boots on the crunching snow and stones, until she stopped a single pace in front of Yangchen and said, “Hello.”

A woman’s voice.

Yangchen lifted her head, confused.

“You don’t need to bow to me,” the woman said.

“Are you not a spirit?”

The woman laughed: a friendly laugh, as if responding to a joke over a cooking fire. “No.”

“I was told that only the Avatar can enter the Spirit World.”

“No,” the woman said. “It’s true that every Avatar can enter the Spirit World, and not every other human can. Most can’t. Some, with a born gift and training and the blessing of the spirits, can. I can. I am Apuluut, boundary-crosser.”

“I am Yangchen.”

“The Avatar.”

“Yes.”

The wind pulled a long, thin braid from under Apuluut's hood.

“Do you come here a lot?” Apuluut asked. “I’ve crossed this boundary four times and never met you.”

“This is the first time I have entered the Spirit World,” Yangchen said. “I have been undergoing training in the paths of the Spirits for two years under Master Choden. She is-- was--” the pain surprised her, sharp as a knife “--the last remaining Master who knew the last Avatar. She prepared me for this journey.” Yangchen looked away from Apuluut’s braid, dancing in the wind, and Apuluut’s concerned expression, and stared out over the empty tundra. “I expected that I would meet with a Spirit.”

“Nah,” Apuluut said with a shrug. “Spirits do their own stuff. Sometimes I see them, a glimpse at the edge of my vision.”

“Oh.”

“You’re the Avatar, though, so I expect you’ll see them more than I ever will.” Envy threaded through her voice.

“Why do you journey here?” Yangchen asked her.

“I look for signs. For my village. What happens here shapes our lives at the South Pole, even though it’s difficult to always see how.”

_Our world and the Spirit World are connected, Yangchen, so closely: warp and weft, push and pull, inward breath and outward breath._

Master Choden’s voice sounded as clear as if she sat beside Yangchen.

“That is the same as our teachings,” Yangchen breathed. “As the Avatar, I must walk the paths between the worlds, understanding both.”

Apuluut smiled. “You’re my sign. Our sign. The Avatar walks with the Spirits again!”

Then Apuluut disappeared: turned to smoke that stretched into the sky like an ascending bird. Yangchen cried out in surprise. What must she do now?

The wind tugged at her legs.

Nothing moved across the rocks but her, walking with no direction, confused. Even with Apuluut gone, no Spirits greeted her. No Spirit walked at the horizon like a mountain. Master Choden had described the Spirit World in such detail that Yangchen had thought she might see it all once: Spirits of woodlands, Spirits of oceans, Spirits of towns, Spirits of learning, Spirits of darker desires. Not this tundra.

Ahead she saw the circle of lichen on which she had entered the Spirit World. “I see,” she said aloud, for surely a Spirit was here, guiding her. She stepped onto the circle and pressed her hands together and--

#

\--her back and neck ached, as if she was a novice new to meditation. Groaning quietly, she stretched out her legs and lay back, sprawling on the stone. The human world. “I did it,” she whispered -- but Master Choden had died a month ago, too soon to see Yangchen step within the Spirit World.

#

Groups of people sat around fires on a high platform, eating rice and momo. The smells tempted her. The sounds, too. The young visiting monks from the Southern Air Temple were drinking a little too much chhaang with some of Yangchen’s friends, laughing over southern stories. The older nuns were watching them with laughter in the creases around their eyes. Beyond the platform’s edge, bison flew: indistinct shapes in the near-darkness.

Yangchen collected a bowl of food and returned to the lower platforms, to the platform where the only sound was the flapping of five-fabric banners in the wind. Yellow, blue, green, red, white. Air, water, earth, fire. Spirit.

A newly built stupa held the bones of Master Choden.

Five-fabric banners stretched between the stupa and the cliff wall, one tied by each nun and novice in the temple and the nuns and monks who had travelled from the other three temples for the ceremony. Food offerings had been placed, and butter candles, and inscribed stones. The food had long since been removed, the candles burnt to their bases and coating the stones.

Yangchen sat in front of the stupa, her bowl in her lap, her hands unmoving.

“I did it,” she said. “I journeyed to the Spirit World and met a Water Tribe boundary-crosser. I will return to the Spirit World. I will be able to perform my duties as Avatar. It is thanks to you.”

The wind blew through the banners.

Yangchen salted her bowl with her tears.

Soon she would depart the Western Air Temple and travel to the North Pole to begin her waterbending training. She would continue her journey along the paths of the Spirits alone -- unless she met Apuluut again. She hoped she did.


End file.
